The current unsustainable growth of the world economy is largely a consequence of the crisis of social capital experienced by much of the world's population. Declining social capital leads the economies to excessive growth, because people seek economic affluence as compensation for the emotional...

While the various streams of environmentalism agree in claiming that the current patterns of economic activity are unsustainable for natural resources, they disagree in answering the following question: who is the responsible? Two different answers have been provided: the people or the...

Self-reported life satisfaction (SRS) in Italy has started to decline well before the current crisis. This paper explores the relationship between SRS and quality of life in Italy, using the ISAE data-base on households. SRS was surveyed on 2000 individuals in May 2008, November 2008 and April...

During the most recent decades people in industrialised countries have reported both a stagnant or even declining subjective well-being, as Easterlin (1974) originally observed, and deterioration in their social and family bonds, as Putnam (2000) has claimed. The paper proposes an integrated...

Sen’s capability approach to the assessment of individual well-being and welfare policies, and to the search for theoretical foundations of a paradigm of human development, is challenged by a puzzling fact. In rich countries where material wealth and liberties are at high levels, a significant...